Husband doesn't help with hardly anything

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wasn’t yesterday a holiday? Was there some reason he couldn’t spend some time on the couch? The OP’s whole post has the feel of just shitting on the spouse as a form of stress release.

OP, what if you just told your spouse that next Saturday you’ll be gone all day because you’re going with a friend to a show. What would happen?

What if you just didn’t cook? What if you ordered out? What if you just announced that you would no longer be cooking on weeknights? What would happen?

I just feel like you’re wanting to *talk* to your husband about this problem that you perceive but you’re not taking any *action* to change the dynamic. You and your spouse are in a dynamic. It takes two to tango. You could change your behavior dramatically. Your complaint is that your spouse does whatever he wants when he wants it. Well, maybe you could stand to do a little bit more of that yourself.

“But the house would fall down!!!!” you cry. Really? So everything has to be done just the way it is now, and what you need is for your husband to basically do some of the stuff you want done? Maybe he does not want to spend his Saturdays at the playground. Maybe he thinks it’s OK to play video games and to let his kid play her own games in her room. Maybe that’s actually OK. Maybe what’s making you unhappy is not his failure to act for others but your failure to act a little more selfishly.

As long as the only story you’ll tell yourself is that your husband —the man you married!— is just inexplicably selfish and bad, you are not going to get anywhere. I would stop trying to talk to him and just start changing the way you act. Book a weekend away by yourself, stat!

Op here. Sure, relax some, but not from 10am to 8pm without budging. Particularly when he took off Friday and did pretty much the same thing that day too.

I’ve tried various versions of things you mentioned - no cooking, no cleaning, etc. and he just does not care. But I don’t want to live in a pigsty, nor do I think we should eat out for every meal ($$ wise and from a health standpoint). The house doesn’t have to be perfect, and we certainly don’t eat every meal at home, so I’d say I’m already pretty lax.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He has ADHD. Seriously, he's able to do well at work because he's able to focus on that one thing. Once work is over, he wants to "zone" into games, sleep, etc. and will use all kinds of techniques to avoid tasks that seem tedious or boring.
I have a teen son with ADHD and without meds, he acts exactly like this.

I'm the PP that said the DH sounds selfish and entitled, but actually this makes more sense. Significant ADHD and defensiveness about doing anything to fix it.

How defensive as oppositional does he get? I missed that part.

Op here. Pretty defensive. Says I’m attacking him and also deflects blame onto me and all of the things I’m not doing well enough in his mind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He has ADHD. Seriously, he's able to do well at work because he's able to focus on that one thing. Once work is over, he wants to "zone" into games, sleep, etc. and will use all kinds of techniques to avoid tasks that seem tedious or boring.
I have a teen son with ADHD and without meds, he acts exactly like this.

I'm the PP that said the DH sounds selfish and entitled, but actually this makes more sense. Significant ADHD and defensiveness about doing anything to fix it.

How defensive as oppositional does he get? I missed that part.

Op here. Pretty defensive. Says I’m attacking him and also deflects blame onto me and all of the things I’m not doing well enough in his mind.

It's over. He's a bonafide selfish a-hole.
plan your exit, consult 3+ lawyers, redirect some money to a savings acct incase he goes on a spree or locks things up. save your sanity.

[Anonymous]

OP, start documenting all that you do- then divorce. I'm sorry.

[Anonymous]

This is pretty much a lot of husbands, they don’t do shit. They just sit there or do their own thing. Women put up with it.

I saw one dad at the aquarium taking everyone to the bathroom and getting them snacks and water bottles. He was so different so yeah there are a few good dads out there, but not many.

[Anonymous]

OP—your way isn’t the only way. If you want something done, do it yourself.

[Anonymous]

Does he pay the bills? If not, cancel the cable and internet. That aught to get his attention.

[Anonymous]

OP, this is the PP who says you should talk less, act more. You dismiss what I say, saying you won’t live in a sty. You also say you don’t want a divorce. Is this how you are with your spouse, you just dismiss everything he says and just stick to your complaints? If so, then I understand why he says you are making things miserable and why he avoids you. Why are you stuck in this role and unwilling to change? How does it benefit you—It *must* benefit you because you are choosing it.
I seriously think you need therapy and possibly medication for depression. If nothing else therapy would help you find new strategies and ways of talking to your husband.
If your response to that is that therapy won’t work and that you are too busy for therapy because your spouse is so lazy and awful, then I suggest you look up the term “help rejecting complainer” and consider the possibility that The situation you were in with your husband is actually extremely comfortable for you despite the fact that you say you hate it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I kind of call BS on your whole point of view here. You sound like the one who is depressed, not your spouse. You speak about your spouse with utter contempt. Like he’s some kind of total loser. But then we learn that he’s into fitness and runs and is killing it at work. So he doesn’t sound lazy.

It sounds like the two of you may have dramatically different points of view on how to parent. Maybe he doesn’t think your kid needs help with homework. Maybe he thinks your kids should manage homework on their own. Maybe he thinks that if he doesn’t have a morning meeting it’s OK for him to sleep late once in a while. Maybe he’s OK with more clutter around the house than you like. None of this would make him evil. Honestly, it’s how I live my life.

If my spouse was running around doing a bunch of stuff that I did not see as necessary or important, and was simultaneously treating me with utter contempt.…yeah. I don’t know. I’m not a dude, this is a woman speaking. Are you married this person and I have been with them for years so presumably you found something about them attractive and endearing. But now you’re talking about them like they are some sort of caricature.

You and your spouse could sit down and make a list of all home/parenting activities and logically split them up. Have you even tried to have that kind of discussion with your spouse in a non-offensive way, just a factual way? Or is it more fun to feel like a martyr and just be enraged at them? Do you do anything fun with your spouse at all? Maybe your spouse avoids being around you and your kid because you oppressively insist on getting your way at all times and are unwilling to see any merit in his different point of view, so in the end avoidance is the approach taken to avoid constant conflict.

Dude, he doesn’t spend any time thinking or worrying about the family, or his kids’ schooling, or dumping everything on his wife.

He’s doing exactly what he wants to do, exactly when he wants to (eat, sleep, videos, work). Wife, house, child be damned.

Op here. I feel like I’ve been really flexible as things have devolved. Dismissed it as “oh we are both just busy” or “this is what it’s like to be a working parent”. I let a LOT of messiness go, I let a lot of forgetfulness go, I let a lot of laziness go, especially when DD was younger. But now she’s older and more self sufficient, we shouldn’t be absolutely drowning. He’s not, but I am!

He truly was better. Not perfect, but much better. Now he’s home more, so he creates more messes but cleans up less, so it’s compounded. Now he’s not required to be up early for a commute, so it’s slipped into getting up as late as humanly possible. And no, no one can ever convince me that it’s a child’s responsibility to wake up their parent to get them to school on time. Particularly when it’s one of the few parenting tasks he does. It definitely feels like he only puts effort into things that interest him.

Chores and activity shuttling aren’t my favorite either, but it’s called being an adult and I just think it’s really crappy to not do your fair share.

And here is where you need to work on you. Why on earth did you just put up with this and let it all slide? How are you going to change that and what are your actual boundaries? Knowing he may never change one tiny bit — what is your plan? Stay with him but outsource more to see if you can find more peace? Get a divorce? Stay married and be totally miserable?

[Anonymous]

I am the person who thought you should re-search help-rejecting complainer. In one of your posts you said “he thought his mom always resented his dad.” This suggests to me that you and your spouse have devolved into comfortable patterns that you learned from your families of origin. His mom resented his dad; You now resent him. This kind of stuff isn’t a coincidence.
The stuff you are complaining about seems so small scale to me. He ordered dinner out and didn’t clean up? Or rather, he didn’t clean up on your schedule.
You sound like you are just walking around like a little rage ball looking for things to be angry about. It’s not his fault that you have to wake up and commute to a job! You are not happy with your life but instead of making any changes you were just blaming everything on him and making him into the villain.
People who live with help rejecting complainers get totally demoralized and check out because there is *nothing* they can say or do that will stop the complaining. Just like I don’t think you are really listening to anything anyone says on this forum that doesn’t agree with you, I don’t believe that you will actually hear anything that your spouse says because you have already decided in your mind what the story is, and the story is that you are terribly put upon and victimized and everyone should feel sorry for you. I believe you are quite comfortable in this position and will not want to do anything to change it, despite talking constantly about how unhappy you are and how everything is unfair to you.

[Anonymous]

I understand that you don't want a divorce, OP. You just want a helpful, considerate husband. Of course you do! That's not too much to ask.

Unfortunately, we cannot control other people, so we don't know if this is an actual option for you. But I do know that if you keep doing what you've been doing, you'll keep getting what you've been getting. So I would counsel you to have a come to Jesus talk with him and lay your unhappiness and the untenable nature of the situation on the table. Let him know that you don't want a divorce, but you can't continue how things are either. As the saying goes, you have to be willing to lose your marriage to have any chance of saving it. And even then, he may not bother, but at least you'll know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, this is the PP who says you should talk less, act more. You dismiss what I say, saying you won’t live in a sty. You also say you don’t want a divorce. Is this how you are with your spouse, you just dismiss everything he says and just stick to your complaints? If so, then I understand why he says you are making things miserable and why he avoids you. Why are you stuck in this role and unwilling to change? How does it benefit you—It *must* benefit you because you are choosing it.
I seriously think you need therapy and possibly medication for depression. If nothing else therapy would help you find new strategies and ways of talking to your husband.
If your response to that is that therapy won’t work and that you are too busy for therapy because your spouse is so lazy and awful, then I suggest you look up the term “help rejecting complainer” and consider the possibility that The situation you were in with your husband is actually extremely comfortable for you despite the fact that you say you hate it.

there’s some kernel of truth here but it’s also tremendously victim-blaming. on a daily basis OP didn’t have a choice when her DH started pulling stunts like making their small child wake him up to take her to school. she’s only “comfortable” with it inadmuch as she has to supress active anger and rage to get through the unfairness of it all. because with men like this, it’s NOT the case that OP could have just “made a choice” for him to do more. No, she likely went through all sorts of phases where she tried to get him to, from discussing to anger to pleading. What happened is NOT that she made some kind of choice because it benefited her, but that he taught her by his actions that there is nothing she can do about it. She got conditioned to it. It’s low-key abusive TBH.

yes now she does have a choice whether to divorce or not. this is a huge change with serious costs & benefits to weigh, like finances and time with her child. she’s not being a “help-rejecting complainer” to have difficulty making this decision.

[Anonymous]

It’s only victim blaming if we accept on face value that OP is a victim. It’s also possible that her spouse is a victim of her behavior. And that both of them are acting in extremely maladaptive ways to reenact familiar scenarios from their youth that are deeply ingrained in them. We are only hearing her side. We are not hearing all the stuff that he does for the household that she has conveniently forgotten. We are not hearing the times that he tried to express to her that he likes to do other things with his time or that he disagrees with her choices in how the house is run or how their child is raised or what the priorities are. She portrays that as “complaining about how I do things while he does nothing.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He has ADHD. Seriously, he's able to do well at work because he's able to focus on that one thing. Once work is over, he wants to "zone" into games, sleep, etc. and will use all kinds of techniques to avoid tasks that seem tedious or boring.
I have a teen son with ADHD and without meds, he acts exactly like this.

I'm the PP that said the DH sounds selfish and entitled, but actually this makes more sense. Significant ADHD and defensiveness about doing anything to fix it.

Is ADHD making him complain about the cleaners, lol?

The fact is, you can both be ADHD and a jerk. I have a brother w ADHD and he is a fantastic husband. ADHD does not excuse or explain this total abdication.

Also ADHD does require symptoms in multiple areas. Someone who can manage work can also manage home duties. Someone motivated to run every day has the capacity to do the freakin’ dishes.

THIS. I wish there was a PSA about this. OP's DH may indeed have ADHD. He could also be depressed. None of this is an excuse for being an absent father and a jerk to your spouse.

Also, one of the problems about any diagnosis for the DH here is that he's not going to do anything about it. If he has ADHD, he's not going to get tested, take meds, or try to use adaptive skills to counteract its impact on his family. Same with depression. He's not going to go find a therapist and talk to a doctor about meds and figure out what works and try to get better. At best, he will go to an appointment that OP researches and makes for him, and if the suggested solutions are really easy, he might do some of them. At best. But OP will have to hold his hand and do most of the legwork and also never be frustrated by the fact that he will never, ever take personal responsibility over any of it. It might get moderately better.

People like this can sometimes find a diagnosis to blame their behavior on, but that in itself is just another way for them to shift responsibility off themselves. They are just selfish. They want to do the stuff they enjoy and they want other people to handle everything else and they have learned from a young age a variety of tactics for making this happen. I know men and women like this. It's entitlement, often facilitated by families who trained them into it. An ADHD diagnosis will not undo 40 years of thinking nothing is your fault and you don't have to do anything that is even mildly unpleasant to you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s only victim blaming if we accept on face value that OP is a victim. It’s also possible that her spouse is a victim of her behavior. And that both of them are acting in extremely maladaptive ways to reenact familiar scenarios from their youth that are deeply ingrained in them. We are only hearing her side. We are not hearing all the stuff that he does for the household that she has conveniently forgotten. We are not hearing the times that he tried to express to her that he likes to do other things with his time or that he disagrees with her choices in how the house is run or how their child is raised or what the priorities are. She portrays that as “complaining about how I do things while he does nothing.”

There’s no excuse for one partner abdicating all household/childcare responsibilities. You’re just fabricating the scenario where OP is at fault.